Feng Shui Assassin by Adrian Hall

HARVEY BARKER
is an assassin on the trail of the trustees of the Valentine Trust determined to avenge the death of his sister. He kills through the use of feng shui – the placing of objects to create negative karma.

DC AMANDA MORGAN
is investigating a suicide and other bizarre accidents, following a trail that makes no sense but that keeps turning up bodies.

FENG SHUI
With knowledge and wisdom ch’i can be used for beneficial and fortuitous practice.

But there are some who use ch’i for a darker purpose.
Feng Shui and Assassin are not two words that you would normally associate with each other but the book Feng Shui Assassin gives this concept a good go and brings a new angle to the ancient Chinese believe of Feng Shui. This book is essentially a tale of revenge and reminds me of those classic Hong Kong Wuxia movies, a little silly at times but extremely entertaining to read.

Harvey Barker is the aforementioned assassin in the book and he is killing off the people who are responsible for his sister’s death by using Feng Shui. The idea of using Feng Shui to cause death is a neat idea but my only gripe is that the effects happened too damn fast. Harvey managed to cause one of his targets to commit suicide in the space of a few minutes just by offsetting some pictures and paperwork. If Feng Shui is so powerful then there would be many more people winning the lottery instantly because of how they dressed or how their rooms are laid out.

Anyway, Harvey is not the only supernatural killer out there and soon he faces a Yoga master, a hitman with the ability to kill people with his origami objects as well as others. The abilities sound funny but the fight between the Feng Shui assassin and the Yoga master was pretty exciting to read. If you’ve ever read any Naruto then you definitely have an idea how Chakra is used in the fight scene.

This was a fun read and Hall has done a wonderful job combining mystical arts from a number of different cultures into a highly imaginative story. The story has excellent pacing and never a dull moment. The story is a refreshing change from the magic spells, vampires or werewolves that we see so often in urban fantasy.

I don’t know if the author is planning to write any more stories but I’m definitely looking forward to some more.